Meeting someone and immediately forgetting their name, walking into a room and not remembering why, leaving the keys in the car, or repeating a question are examples of short-term memory loss, a common symptom that occurs in adults with the passing of the years
According to Samantha Holden, clinical director of Ambulatory Neurology at UCHealth in the United States, short-term memory loss is the impairment of the ability to store, maintain and retrieve a certain amount of information in a period of 30 seconds to a minute.
But he warns that it is necessary to differentiate whether these changes are due to the normal aging process or perhaps to diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Some of the symptoms Holden lists to watch out for are:
With the aim of improving memory capacity, health specialists assure that a healthy diet and the practice of mental exercises are of vital importance.
Beyond consulting the doctor, a branch of traditional medicine also offers natural remedies that help improve memory. In this sense, Mejor con Salud highlights the importance of Bacopa, a medicinal plant that belongs to the scrofulariaceae family, for mental health.
Also known as neer brahmi, water hyssop, and herb of grace, it grows in humid tropical environments in countries such as Pakistan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan, and China.
However, it can appear in places in North and Central America as well as in tropical Africa. Numerous properties stand out to bacopa, such as being anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, analgesic, sedative and antiepileptic.
And this has to do with its composition, detailed by Frontiers in Nutrition magazine in a list:
Research in animals and humans suggests that this plant is key for the brain, since it helps to improve memory, attention and learning.
Research shared in Psychopharmacology found that healthy adults taking 300 mg of Bacopa daily for 12 weeks showed improved ability to process visual information.
Another study, in this case released by Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, also adds to promoting that it has these properties.
But when you have to sharpen your sights, bacopa stands out for its neuroprotective effect, key in the prevention of neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's and forms of dementia.
A study in Drug Target Insights even determined that bacosides have therapeutic potential in Alzheimer's disease.
Due to its antioxidant content, bacopa may confer other health benefits.
